UK Tories

"Consider this poll question: “When you think of people who are Democrats, what type of person comes to mind?” About 38 percent of respondents selected words like “working class,” “middle class,” and “common people” while only 1 percent selected words like “rich” or “wealthy.” The opposite was true when asked about Republicans: 31 percent picked words like “wealthy” and “business executive” while only 6 percent chose “working class” and its kindred.

Or consider a second series of poll questions. When asked which party would be “better for” different groups, 51 percent said that Democrats were better for the poor versus 22 percent who said that of Republicans (the rest said that the parties were about the same or that they were not sure). And 39 percent said that Democrats were better for the middle class versus 31 percent who said that of Republicans. By contrast, most (54 percent) said that the Republicans were better for Wall Street; only 13 percent said this of Democrats."

David Skelton is Deputy Director of Policy Exchange. You can follow him on Twitter @djskelton.

Newt Gingrich’s annihilation of Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary served to highlight the Republican front runner’s biggest weakness – he finds it difficult to empathise with blue collar voters. His campaign was found out in a state where unemployment is a major issue and where the blue collar vote is crucial.

Mitt Romney’s problem isn’t dissimilar to the bind faced by Conservatives in the UK. Despite having almost perfect electoral conditions at the last election, the Tories remained handicapped by their “party of the rich” label and failed to make a sufficient breakthrough amongst the skilled working class, who hold the key to British elections.

In an electoral environment dominated by job insecurity and a rising cost of living, politicians such as Romney and Cameron have to be able to empathise with blue collar voters if they’re to achieve electoral success.

Tuesday's New York Times piece described David Cameron as a "Slasher of Government Bloat". The article by John F Burns was premature in comparing Cameron to Thatcher but the fact that it appeared on the front page of America's most important newspaper is noteworthy. Americans are partly interested in Cameron because they know that the Obama administration cannot delay its own budget cuts much longer. Cameron also fascinates the Republicans as they seek to be more than "the party of no".

Former Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson, writing in today's Washington Post, argues that David Cameron could provide a model for the Republicans to defeat Obama. Focusing on the Big Society agenda, Gerson warns his fellow Republicans that Cameronism is about much more than spending cuts:

"Obama has every reason to fear the emergence of Cameron-style Republicanism. But American conservatives who respect Cameron's budget-cutting courage should also pay attention to his political insights. A successful austerity agenda depends on the assembly of an ideological coalition -- and it requires a domestic agenda more inspiring than responsible accounting."

In the New York Times Ross Douthat also argues that Cameronism is about much more than fiscal conservatism. Douthat notes that the Tory leader has crafted "a more sweeping and serious blueprint for cutting and decentralising government than we’ve seen from any Republican politician since Newt Gingrich, and maybe Ronald Reagan." Praise indeed.

Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation - an expert on both countries' politics - sees the strengths and weaknesses in Cameron's appeal to US conservatives. For The Telegraph he asks: "Could Cameron become an inspiration to US conservatives in the run-up to November 2010 and even November 2012?". His answer:

"On economic policy and welfare reform, I would say yes. And the British cost-cutting measures are likely to be widely touted by conservative politicians in the run-up to the mid-terms as a powerful example of how America should be dealing with its economic woes. Even the Tea Party movement could be singing the praises of George Osborne’s budget cuts in the coming months. But I would add this caveat: Cameron’s views on socialised health care, the environment, foreign aid, international treaties, and some foreign policy and national security issues are unpopular among US conservatives, and the UK Conservative Party is distinctly to the left of the Republican Party in most areas. There are many on the Right in the States who would view Cameron as a centrist politician, rather than a conservative in the Thatcher-Reagan mould."

David Cameron launching the Tory campaign, across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament.

I'm getting all sorts of calls from international media at present. To date I've had interview requests from Germany, France, Sweden, Korea, Turkey, Canada, Australia and the USA.

One request earlier in the week was typical; Please put us in touch with a gay, green Tory so we can give our audience a taste of the new Conservative Party. Of course, I said, I can point you in that direction. There are some candidates who will meet your specifications but you won't be giving your audience a full account of why David Cameron has restored the Conservative Party to the verge of power.

The main reason why David Cameron is likely to be Britain's first Conservative Prime Minister in 13 years is Labour failure. The incumbent Labour government of Gordon Brown has doubled the national debt. The UK economy has suffered one of the longest and deepest recessions of any developed countries. Across a range of indicators Labour has failed. 80% of Tory members explain their own party's lead in terms of Labour failure.

Traditional Tory messages have twice rescued the party. Twice in recent years the Cameron project has got into difficulties. Once in the autumn of 2007 when Gordon Brown enjoyed a 'honeymoon' after he first became Prime Minister and in February and March of this year. In both periods a slide in Tory popularity was reversed by promises to cut taxes. In 2007 it was a promise to abolish inheritance tax for all but millionaires. In the last two weeks it has been a promise to stop nearly all of a £6bn 'jobs tax', planned by Labour.

Without the 'modernisation' of the Conservative brand voters might not have listened to the tax cutting message. In underlining the importance of the two tax cuts (above) I don't mean to imply that David Cameron's modernisation of the Conservative Party (sometimes called 'decontamination') wasn't important. The changes that David Cameron has made to the Conservative Party - protecting funding for the National Health Service... developing an agenda for the poor... emphasising green issues... greater candidate diversity - mean that more people are willing to listen to the Conservative Party than when it was narrowly interested in just a few issues.

Where Cameron has modernised the Tory brand he has usually done so in a distinctively conservative way. So, for example, in fighting poverty Mr Cameron has advocated strengthening marriage, tough requirements for those on welfare and school choice for parents. On the environment his Climate Change spokesman, Greg Clark, has said that no measure to reduce Britain's carbon footprint will be taken unless it delivers other benefits to the nation, eg in delivering cheaper household energy bills. It's worth noting that the environment is hardly being mentioned in the Tory campaign. In a leaflet summarising ten top Tory policies it was completely omitted.

Cameron's Conservative Party remains the party of Margaret Thatcher. If Cameron wins the General Election the membership of the parliamentary Conservative Party will be at least half new. It will be the biggest intake of 'freshers' in modern times. And they are 'the children of Margaret Thatcher'. They want welfare reform. Control of the trade unions. Lower, simpler taxes. They are pro-marriage. Sceptical about the European Union. They regard defence spending as a number one priority. Some disciples of Margaret Thatcher have, over the years, come to think of her only in revolutionary terms. Yes, she transformed the British economy but she was also a pragmatist. She left the BBC, National Health Service, welfare state, among other things, untouched. David Cameron will deserve the same latitude to be pragmatic as she enjoyed.

Will the Conservatives win? The scale of Labour's failure gives the Conservative Party a very good chance but I offer three cautionary thoughts:

The Conservatives need the biggest swing from Labour to the Conservatives in post-war Britain. Cameron needs a bigger swing than Margaret Thatcher achieved in 1979.

The electoral geography is stacked against the Conservatives. There are a variety of explanations but the size of Labour seats is, on average, a lot smaller than the average Conservative seat. Labour won a majority in the House of Commons of over 60 in 2005 with a 3% lead. The Tories probably need a lead of 5% to 8% to get even a majority of one seat.

Labour has created a huge public sector vote. With the state spending more than half of the UK's national income there is a large bloc of voters who get all or part of their income from government and they are more inclined to back Labour (the most pro-state party) as a result.

The Leader of Australia's Liberal Party, Malcolm Turnbull, has been in London this week. He has met all of the key figures in David Cameron's Conservative Party, including an hour long meeting with David Cameron, George Osborne and William Hague. There is probably no closer relationship between any two conservative parties in the world and it is now the UK Tories - on the edge of power - who are repaying the enormous help that the Australian Liberals gave them when them when John Howard was Prime Minister.

Mr Turnbull, trailing in opinion polls back home, gave a major speech during his visit to the Policy Exchange think tank. It was standing room only on Tuesday night to hear the Liberal leader, wearing R M Williams boots, give a stout defence of free enterprise. He began by noting that Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had vowed to put government at the centre of the economy.

Mr Turnbull listed the achievements of capitalism before warning against the dangers of government being at the centre of economic life. He argued that capitalism had had a transformational effect on world poverty over the last thirty years and government intervention had been at the heart of the last year's banking crisis:

"Throughout the 20th century, the strongest and most successful, most vibrant, most interesting societies were those infused with the principles of political, economic and religious freedom. The best-performing economies were those where citizens were given the maximum incentive, under the rule of law, to make the choices they considered best for themselves and their families. This is not a matter of ideology of faith. It is an unassailable fact of history. The Berlin Wall did not fall by accident. It fell because millions of people living in societies crippled by the failures of excessive government control yearned for the freedoms they saw in the West. The socialisation of the means of production and distribution had manifestly failed them, and they aspired to something better...

There have been few periods in human history where we have witnessed, in the space of a single generation, such enormous economic advances across so much of the world. Many hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, as great and ancient societies such as India and even the world’s largest Communist state, the People’s Republic of China, opened their economies to global trade, accepting that free market has a great deal to offer, the principles of the free market has a great deal to offer. The freest societies have proved themselves prosperous, creative and dynamic, while societies which restrict freedom have been paralysed by social and economic failure – the most extreme contemporary example being North Korea – but history abounds with others. The fruits of greater economic freedom have been spectacular – in the 20 years to 2004 the percentage of the world’s poor living on $1 a day or less halved. That is a quantum leap by any measure, on any conceivable index of human happiness. And it is a record of achievement, a measure of progress, not to be demeaned or dismissed in the scramble to find scapegoats for last year’s collapse of confidence in global financial markets...

What has happened in this past year does not as Kevin Rudd has claimed demonstrate that the ”neo-liberal experiment of the last thirty years has failed”. Now I should note at the outset the absurdity of declaring a failure of capitalism because of a crisis in one industry sector alone and of course there will be libraries built to fill the books written on the global financial crisis and its causes. But we should note that it was a crisis in the banking sector which had it origins in the United States property market, where an asset bubble was fuelled by imprudent, sub-prime lending to people whom banks would not normally have rated as creditworthy. In other words, loans were being made to people whose best, if not only, prospect of repaying the loan was out of the sale or refinancing of the house, which in turn depended on the value of the house rising materially. Far from being a product of unbridled ”free market extremism,” as Mr Rudd is fond to say, this irresponsible lending could not have occurred had it not been for the fact that the United States Government, in the shape of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was actually underwriting two thirds of the entire mortgage market.."

The Australian Liberals have sent the above email to their supporters in Australia urging them to encourage their British friends to register to vote as part of the Conservatives' dontleaveyourvoteathome project. Thank you Mr Turnbull!

The British Conservative Party was delighted yesterday when Germany's left-leaning finance minister, Peer Steinbruck, used an interview with Newsweek to describe Gordon Brown's large fiscal stimulus as "crass Keynesianism" and "breathtaking". In today's Independent, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne writes:

"How ironic. In the very same week that Gordon Brown stood up in Parliament and claimed that he was saving the world, the world answered back. In a matter of just a few days, the German Finance Minister described Mr Brown's reckless borrowing as "crass" and "depressing", international currency markets sent the pound to a new low against the euro, and it has become clear that the British bank recapitalisation plan is the most expensive in Europe."

Senior Labour figures attempted to suggest that Herr Steinbruck's intervention was all about internal German politics but his view has been backed overnight by the CDU half of Berlin's Grand Coalition. Steffen Kampeter, who speaks on economic policy for Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party, described moves to raise debt as "a failure of Labour policy". The BBC reports Herr Kampeter as saying:

"Peer Steinbruck's comments have nothing whatsoever to do with internal German politics, as Prime Minister Brown has suggested. The tremendous amount of debt being offered by Britain shows a complete failure of Labour policy. In questioning the British government's approach, Peer Steinbruck is exactly expressing the views of the German Grand Coalition. After years of lecturing us on how we need to share in the gains of uncontrolled financial markets, the Labour politicians can't now expect us to share in its losses. The tremendous amount of debt being offered by Britain shows a complete failure of Labour policy."

Angela Merkel is supportive of a fiscal stimulus across the EU but insists, like Britain's Conservatives, that it be fully-funded. Rosemary Righter in The Times points to German history to explain the caution:

"Germans are profoundly averse to debt and, since the collapse of the currency in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, they have remained terrified of inflation. Nor do they trust pump-priming; they tried that after the 1973 oil shock, they point out, and all it did was drive up public debt. Their reaction to emergency spending by government is to save against the day when the bills come due. More debt today, they reckon, means higher taxes tomorrow. A Chancellor who keeps her powder dry is just their cup of chocolate."

The Guardian has labelled Angela Merkel 'Frau Nein' after she adopted 'go-it-alone' positions on a range of issues. In addition to her attitude to borrowing she "opposes any common EU policy that could be seen as confrontational towards Russia"; "has led resistance to the European commission's carbon trading proposals"; and "has frustrated Washington, London and Paris by resisting the imposition of meaningful economic sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme".

By Tim Montgomerie, Editor of ConservativeHome.com and a speechwriter to two former Tory leaders.

A number of US commentators - including Fred Barnes, David Brooks and Mike Gerson - have suggested that the Republicans should study the renaissance of Britain's Tories as they plot their own way back to popularity. That's good advice because - despite recent setbacks - the Conservatives are likely to be Britain's next government. Although there's much to learn the study needs to be careful and learn from the mistakes as well as the more evident successes. Jonathan Freedland wrote an article for the New York Times that - if absorbed - would have sent the GOP in a very unbalanced direction. Here are eight observations on what the GOP should learn from David Cameron's Conservatives:

(1) Patiently build for the long-termThis is probably the most important lesson - and one made by The Spectator's James Forsyth in another very useful look at this subject. It may be difficult to hear this but Americans are unlikely to turn against Barack Obama quickly. The Conservatives wasted our first four years in opposition -
believing that voters would soon reject Tony Blair and we consequently failed to begin
the work of serious policy renewal. There was too much tactics, too little strategy.

All over the world we see voters re-electing incumbents at the first time of asking. Think Tony Blair, George W Bush, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Stephen Harper, John Howard. Republicans don't need to complete their rethink quickly. Take time. Don't rush to conclusions. Debate thoroughly. Undertake serious - academically respectable - policy making. And don't throw your best long-term prospects (eg Bobby Jindal) into the line of fire too quickly, as we did with William Hague.

(2) Aim for greater breadth of appeal...David Cameron's change agenda can be summarised by four 'C's:

Candidates: He has relentlessly promoted women candidates and candidates from minority backgrounds (and with some success).

Conservation: A famous visit to a Norwegian glacier - complete with huskies - was the most memorable moment in David Cameron's conversion of his party to the cause of combating climate change. Voters were encouraged to vote blue (the Tories' colour) and 'go green'. Conservatives have been most successful electorally when they've focused on local, practical green measures rather than 'change the world' environmentalism.

Compassion: In echoes of George W Bush's 2000 campaign David Cameron has presented himself as
a gentler conservative, concerned about the many poorer communities
failed by Labour's big state. The first visit of his leadership was to a project working with disadvantaged youths and his first announcement was a major commission into the causes of persistent poverty.

Civil liberties: Once the party of authoritarianism the Conservatives have about-turned and become a vigorous opponent of Labour's plans for a national ID card and for an extended period of detention without charge. A more respectful view of same-sex relationships has also bought David Cameron greater opportunity to make the case for traditional marriage.

All of these changes have helped the Conservative Party connect with the many wealthier British voters that had deserted it.

(3) ...BUT not a different narrowness
Under Michael Howard - David Cameron's predecessor as Tory leader - the party had become too narrow; talking only of crime, immigration, tax and Britain's relationship with Europe. David Cameron has rightly added to the Conservative appeal by addressing quality of life issues (the 'CCCC' agenda referred to above). But - although necessary - it left the Conservative Party almost as unbalanced in the summer of 2007 as it was under Michael Howard in 2005. More core Tory Party members were unhappy with David Cameron in September 2007 than were happy. Only when the Tory leadership started simultaneously talking about the familiar and 'the change' messages was David Cameron able to unite the core vote and the new members of his coalition*.

Australian John Howard's rule of thumb was to spend as much time keeping his base happy as wooing new voters. David Cameron neglected the first half of the task until a year ago.

(4) Neutralise the left-leaning media
In our earliest days of opposition, the Tories just seemed to get angry - attacking the left-liberal media and retreating under the comfort blanket of the Daily Mail and Telegraph (Fox News and Talk Radio would be the nearest US equivalents).

David Cameron realised that an election victory would be very difficult if the BBC and The Guardian (as the journal of the ideas class, it is Britain's most important newspaper) remained hostile. He has courted both extensively - not just giving them constant exclusives but also addressing 'their issues' - 'the CCCC quartet'. Labour reacted furiously when a recent Guardian leader entertained the mere possibility that its readers should consider voting Tory.

The economic crisis is hurting centre right parties as Dan Hannan predicted it would:

"In the current climate, what people see are fat-cat bankers being bailed out by hard-pressed taxpayers. And, instead of objecting to the bail-out, they object to the bankers and, by extension, to the free market culture they are thought to embody. The world over, Left-of-Centre parties are benefiting: Obama in the US, Brown here."

Since the onset of the crisis John McCain has fallen significantly behind Barack Obama.

The possibility of Prime Minister Stephen Harper winning a majority in Canada have also declined. The opposition Liberals have moved up in recent polls.

It's not just an anti-incumbent effect either.

In the UK Labour's opinion poll disadvantage has been halved. 20% behind six weeks ago the Tory lead is now just 10%. Labour now lead the Tories on some measures economic trust.

New Zealand's Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark has also stormed back in the polls. With just four weeks to go until polling day one poll has the Nationals down 7% to 40.5% and the governing Labour Party up a point to 37.5%. If repeated in November 8th's General Election that would produce a hung parliament.